Before we start. Please note that performing a clean install of Windows on your WD Sentinel DS6100 is not something supported by Western Digital. You do this at your own risk. If you have any data on your DS6100 you want to keep, make sure you back it up. Clean installing an operating system includes wiping your hard drives. We also highly recommend backing up the recovery image in the recovery partition of the DS6100. We have written a guide on how to do this here.

Gather your resources

To perform a clean install of Windows Server 2016 on your WD Sentinel DS6100, you will need the following:

Get a copy of the Marvell 94xx SAS/SATA RAID Controller driver

The WD Sentinel uses a RAID controller which Windows Server 2016 and Windows PE does not have the driver for. In order for Windows Server 2016 and Windows PE to see the boot drives in your WD Sentinel, you'll need to inject a RAID controller driver into their respective images.

You can find these drivers in the WD Sentinel firmware/software package you download from the WD support site. The drivers are located in a .cab file called mvsdrv.cab packaged in sentinel_firmware_2_2_10_18.zip.

Create the Windows PE boot disk

One of the quirks with installing Windows Server 2016 on a WD Sentinel DS6100 from a USB is that you'll need two of them. The first USB will be a FAT32 formatted boot disk because the WD Sentinel can't boot off NTFS. The second USB will be a NTFS formatted Windows Server 2016 installer because one of the files on the install media exceeds the 4GB file size limit of FAT32.

Create the Windows Server 2016 install disk

There are two parts to this bit. First we need to inject the RAID driver from the previous section into the Windows Server 2016 installation media. Then we need to put that installation media on a USB stick.

Copy the Windows Server 2016 installation media to a local working directory. We're going to assume you have place this in C:\WorkingDir\Win2016. We are also going to assume a copy of the RAID drivers have been extracted to C:\WorkingDir\mvsdrv and that an empty folder C:\WorkindDir\mount also exists.

Run the following three commands to inject the RAID controller driver into the first image (Index:1) inside install.wim.

Since there are 4 images in total on a Windows Server 2016 install media, repeat the steps for each of the other images (Index:2-4). Below is a list of what index is which image.

Windows Server 2016 Standard

Windows Server 2016 Standard (Desktop Experience)

Windows Server 2016 Datacenter

Windows Server 2016 Datacenter (Desktop Experience)

Once the RAID drivers have been injected into the Windows Server 2016 install media, you can simply just copy the installation files to a NTFS formatted USB. If you want to make the USB bootable so you can use it with other computers, we have written another guide on how to do that here.

Perform the clean install

After you have made your Windows PE bootable USB and Windows Server 2016 installation media for the WD Sentinel, plug the Windows PE bootable USB into one of the USB ports on the back of your WD Sentinel and turn it on while pressing and holding the recovery button. Once Windows PE has loaded, plug the Windows Server 2016 installation media you created and run setup.exe.

To work out what drive letter the Windows Server 2016 install is on, run the diskpart command and then type list volume. Type exit to quit diskpart.

Install the WD components

The WD Sentinel DS6100 out of the box comes with Widows Server 2012 R2 Essentials preinstalled along with components from Western Digital that make features such as the LCD and fan work. These components will need to be reinstalled after a clean install of Windows and can be found in the sentinel_firmware_2_2_10_18.zip file mentioned earlier.

Known issues

After successfully performing a clean install of Windows Server 2016 and the WD components, you may notice that not everything is working. Since installing Windows Server 2016 is not something that Western Digital officially supports, there may not be solutions to these problems. We've listed some of these problems here.

Unlike the Windows Server 2012 R2 process for performing a clean install, the fan will spin at maximum speed until the WD components are installed and the Windows Server Essentials Experience is configured.

If you install WDBranding.msi, the Windows Server Essentials Dashboard says Windows Server 2012 instead of just Windows Server. You can resolve this by uninstalling that component.

We have found that the WD Tray (WDSUSetup.exe) may need to be reinstalled after configuring the Windows Server Essentials Experience to get it working.

WD SOFTWARE UPDATE FAILED appears on the LCD screen and you'll also find that you are unable to check for firmware updates. We are unsure why this happens even with the latest firmware but suspect is has something to do with WD Product Configuration service failing to start. Currently no known workaround.

27 comments:

Hi,You seem very active with the DS Sentinel server. Do you have a copy of the recovery image you'd be able to share as my HDD failed and WD support won't help. 2016 is on my list to do, but I'd also like the stock recovery first.

I'm constantly searching on the internet for posts that will help me. Too much is clearly to learn about this. I believe you created good quality items in Functions also. Keep working, congrats! privacy online

I'm constantly searching on the internet for posts that will help me. Too much is clearly to learn about this. I believe you created good quality items in Functions also. Keep working, congrats! vpn veteran

We operate only in Dubai. If you an focus the work to UAE only then you don't need to put Dubai in the keywords as most people will look for laundry services and may not necessarily put Dubai or UAE in the keyword. laundry dubai

The common man does not know that recovery of data is not as easy as reformatting the failed medium or media. When you select the option of reformatting the disk, it also allows the master boot to be overwritten. data recovery lab

Savaliya Oil Maker Machine for Home Usage. This Product is Easy to Use and it produces health oil for your family. There are also some other products of savaliya industry, like coconut oil maker machine, peanut oil maker machine, sesame oil maker machine.